Product. Passion & Salt.

A Blog of thoughts, musings and occasional rants by Executive Chef, Jimmy Sneed.

Joe is the chef/owner of a nice little restaurant in town. My wife and I had dinner there a few weeks back. Joe came out to say hi, which was nice since I had never met him before. Or so I thought.

Joe noted that I had done a few guest dinners at the Ryland Inn in White House, NJ where my friend Craig Shelton was the chef. (Side note: the hostess was a teenager from Williamsburg who became the opening hostess for me at The Frog and the Redneck, and later married my chef, Dale Reitzer. They now own Acacia).

But, I digress.

Joe was one of Craig’s line cooks and had the great fortune of being assigned to work with me on my dish for the big dinner. Lucky guy. Noting that was a long time ago, I jokingly asked if I was an asshole to work with (a recurring theme in my blogs). The answer I got back was “total”.

Assuming he was joking, I moved the conversation forward. Then, we agreed to have coffee together the following week. Coffee turned into lunch and it was obvious that this guy was serious about food, and serious about our profession. Real potential. I’m gonna keep my eye on this one.

Then I reminded him of his response to my question. He informed me that he had gotten so mad at me that evening that he walked out of the kitchen into the parking lot ready to quit his job rather than finish the evening with me. wtf?

“I was there to help you”, he began.

Whoa. Stop right there. No wonder you didn’t like me, you silly goose.

You weren’t there to help me. You were there to work. You were there to work hard and learn. You were there to do what was asked of you.

You see, I have very little time in a strange kitchen to put out a course of food for 200 people that will blow them away. If you listen to my instruction I will very clearly convey exactly what I need you to do. Your best response would be “Yes Chef” to everything I say for the next three hours. You are not there to ‘help me’. You are there to work, learn, and be part of a small, productive team. If anything, I was there to help you.

I don’t think he got it.

This wasn’t my first rodeo. I spent many years ‘helping’ put out great food for chefs over the course of my career. As the years passed and young cooks began to see themselves as future TV stars, it became harder and harder to identify the ones dedicated to becoming the best cooks they could be: few and far between they are.

I recall one high profile event at Universal Studios a while back. There were plenty of ‘famous’ chefs like Wolfgang Puck, Hubert Keller, Cal Stamenov, Thomas Keller and so on. As we gathered for our booth assignments, we were offered a slew of culinary students from which to choose as many helpers as we needed. I needed three and asked for volunteers who werewilling to work hard and learn. Three stepped forward.

“Ok”, said drill sergeant Sneed, “take off your sunglasses, button your coats up to the top, one fold of the cuff and no drinking, smoking, autograph hunting or wandering around until we are cleaned up, packed up and ready to go at the end of the night. You will see plenty of your co-students walking around with a glass of champagne, a cig in their mouth, and an air of arrogance. That will not be you. Everybody still on board?”

Yes Chef!

Good, let’s get busy.

First, I need someone to slice the baguettes. Here is how you hold the knife, here is the motion. Do not push the knife, let its weight do the slicing or the bread will squish and the slices will be misshapen. I’ll show you. With your first motion you make a small cut on top of the bread, ¼” from the end. Then, with long slicing motions you will let the weight of the knife do the cutting. Do not push down on the knife. I know, it’s a lot of motions for once slice but do you see how nice they are? That’s work you can be proud of.

Now, I need 600 just like those.

Returning a couple of minutes later I find that Sara has been following her instincts and pushing the knife thru the bread.

Stop! I will show you one more time how to do this. Use8 or 9 slicing motions for each slice, just like this!

An hour later, Sara had turned 15 baguettes into 600 perfect, thin, symmetric slices. “Now, toast them lightly, turning them over so both sides dry a bit and get a slight crunch. Here, I’ll show you the first batch…..”

So, I hope you see, Joe, that there was much to be learned that night. If you chose to be offended by being shown what to do, and criticized for not listening to my precise instruction, then I have no apology to make. I want every cook that I work with to become better and I want to become better with every event I work. But this I promise you. I would never intentionally demean, degrade, or humiliate you, or any cook. It’s not who I am.

That does not mean a cook won’t feel humiliated, but that would never be my intent. It’s a crazy element of human nature that you can say something to one person, who acknowledges it and moves on, and say the same to another person who takes great offense. As Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”.

Comments

2 Responses to “Say it Ain’t So, Joe”

drew writes:

I worked for you once, for a short while, at the Frog. I’d disagree with Joe. There’s a difference between working for an asshole and working for a hard ass. The later implies dedication to the craft and an unyielding, intense passion. While it took some time to realize this difference, working for a hard ass was quite an experience and pleasure. Sadly, few of the other staff made it less than appealing, but I learned a great deal.

While boiling water one day during prep, you happen to be in the kitchen and while I don’t remember the exact words you used, the gist was “FOCUS!!”

It isn’t hard to boil water, but if you don’t boil it right it’ll f*ck up the whole menu. I listened. I learned. And some days I still want to wear the coat. Every detail matters, and no one detail is less significant than another.

While I no longer work in the industry, when I do cook, even if a PBJ, I do it with that same intensity and passion.

The secret ingredient to any recipe is a dash of imagination.

July 2, 2014 at 7:48 am

drew writes:

***I should have stated that while boiling water, I started whistling.